The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism
Newsletter
Volume 1 No. 39
25 January 2008
PECIAL OPPORTUNITY AT YIISA
Post-Doctorate Research Fellowship, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), Yale University
Applicants are invited for a Research Fellowship tenable for one year, renewable for one further academic year, commencing in September 2008. Applications are welcome from candidates from various academic disciplines, with a strong background in the study of antisemitism and related fields. YIISA is dedicated to the scholarly research of the origins and manifestations associated with antisemitism globally, as well as other forms of prejudice, as it relates to policy.
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YIISA ANTISEMITISM IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE SEMINAR
Thursday, Feb. 7 @4:15 PM | Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Rm. 101 (63 High St.)
“From the ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’ to the ‘Origins of Totalitarianism’ and the Genocide Convention.: Adorno and Horkheimer in the Company of Arendt and Lemkin”
Speaker: Professor Seyla Benhabib, Director, Program in Ethics, Politics and Economics, Yale University
RELATED EVENT OF INTEREST AT YALE
Tuesday, Jan. 29 @ 7 PM | Sudler Hall (William L. Harkness Hall, Rm. 201), 100 Wall St.
“The Psychology of Hate” panel discussion
Chair: Peter Salovey, Dean of Yale College; Panelists: Yale Professors Marianne LaFrance, Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, and John Dovidio; Betsy Paluck of Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Director’s Travels
YIISA Director Charles Small is traveling in Europe to speak on aspects of antisemitism. On 27 and 28 January he will be in Rome attending a conference entitled Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial, Contemporary crimes against humanity: Has the world not learnt the lesson? The Conference is hosted by Francesco Rutelli, Minister of Cultural Heritage of Italy. The opening address will be by Romano Prodi, Prime Minister of Italy. Charles Small’s presentation is entitled “Fighting Contemporary Antisemitism and Crimes against Humanity: The Role of Governments and of the International Community”. In addition, he will be speaking on Thursday, January 31, at the London School of Economics (LSE), University of London. His talk is entitled “Why Extreme Israel-Bashing is Contemporary Antisemitism.” It starts at 7 p.m. He will also chair and speak on a panel discussion on Wednesday, January 30 at the SOAS, University of London. The panel is entitled “Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections”, based on the first YIISA Working Paper by David Hirsh.
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US scholars to speak at Italian conference on anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial
(European Jewish Press) Charles Small, a US specialist on anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, has been invited by Italy’s Ministry of Culture to speak at a landmark conference on Holocaust denial, genocide and other recent crimes against humanity later this month in Rome. This is the first such event organized and hosted by the Italian government.
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VIDEOS
BBC Produces Whitewash of “The Hijacking of British Islam” think-tank report
(Democracy Broadcasting) From Britain’s Channel 4 News, Dean Godson (Research Director of think-tank Policy Exchange) discusses the findings from the new report “The Hijacking of British Islam” with Muslim Council of Britain’s Assistant Secretary General, Inayat Bunglawala.
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Palestinians Shoot at News Crew
(YouTube) A short while after Palestinian snipers shot dead a volunteer from Ecuador, the news team covering the incident became the next target. The camera caught it all – the fear, the uncertainty, knowing your life can end with the next bullet.
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REPORTS
Israel, Anti-Semitism, and Free Speech
(American Jewish Committee) This essay by Bernard Harrison has three connected aims. The first and central one is to provide a philosophical framework for a distinction that has lately come to play a leading role in discussions of the Middle East conflict: the distinction between fair criticism of Israel and anti-Semitic defamation. The remaining two aims of this essay are, first, to defend Rosenfeld against charges of attempting to silence criticism of Israel by smearing its authors as anti-Semites, and second, to show that, and why, objecting to and exposing mendacious and defamatory attacks on Israel does not constitute either a threat to free speech or a strategy for closing down debate on the Middle East conflict.
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The Hijacking of British Islam
(Policy Exchange) An authoritative new report by Policy Exchange, the UK’s leading centre-right thinktank, entitled The Hijacking of British Islam: How extremist literature is subverting Britain’s mosques, reveals the worrying extent of extremist penetration of mosques and other key institutions of the British Muslim community. The report is the most comprehensive academic survey of its kind ever produced in the UK and is based on a year-long investigation by several teams of specialist researchers into the availability of extremist literature and covers more than a hundred mosques and Islamic centres throughout the UK.
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Britain and the Middle East
(Washington Institute) On January 15, 2008, British ambassador to the United States Sir Nigel Sheinwald addressed a Washington Institute Policy Forum. This report includes edited excerpts from his presentation, detailing goals for Britain’s role in the Middle East. “Over the past eighteen months, the regional picture in the Middle East has changed a great deal, and for the better, with the international community reuniting around a common agenda in support of the new Iraq, on the Middle East peace process, and in Lebanon.”
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Iran Now Free to Achieve Its Military Nuclear Ambitions: An Israeli Perspective on the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Maj.-Gen. (res.) Aharon Ze’evi Farkash, Former Director of IDF Military Intelligence, writes “After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the EU opened diplomatic negotiations in July 2003 to try to stop the Iranian nuclear program. By the end of that same year, in the wake of the U.S. victory in Iraq, Qaddafi had stopped Libya’s nuclear military program. It was in this context of Western detection of their nuclear program and the Iraq War that led the Iranians to halt their nuclear program across the board in 2003. The NIE indeed admits that the Iranian halt in its nuclear programs came about from the international scrutiny and pressure that resulted from “exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.”
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ARTICLES OF INTEREST
MIDDLE EAST
Livni: Israel will defend its citizens – even at the price of UN condemnation
(Ynet) Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni addressed Tuesday’s UN Security Council meeting on a proposal to issue a condemnation against Israel for its role in the current situation in Gaza in her speech at the annual Herzliya Conference. “I believe that Israel should not have to apologize for its existence and it will continue to defend the lives of its citizens, even at the price of condemnation,” she said, adding that “it is inconceivable for Palestinians to fire rockets on Israel and then ask for our help.”
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Palestinian journalists: Hamas staged blackouts
(Jerusalem Post) On at least two occasions this week, Hamas staged scenes of darkness as part of its campaign to end the political and economic sanctions against the Gaza Strip, Palestinian journalists said Wednesday. In the first case, journalists who were invited to cover the Hamas government meeting were surprised to see Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and his ministers sitting around a table with burning candles.
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Hamas ‘spent months cutting through Gaza wall in secret operation’
(Times) As tens of thousands of Palestinians clambered back and forth between the Gaza strip and Egypt today, details emerged of the audacious operation that brought down a hated border wall and handed the Islamist group Hamas what might be its greatest propaganda coup. Hamas, which took control of the coastal territory last June after a stand-off with Fatah, has denied that its men set off the explosions that brought down as much as two-thirds of the 12-km wall in the early hours.
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The PR War in Gaza
(Newsweek) The Egyptian border debacle is just one more reminder that the law of unintended consequences tends to rule in the Middle East, despite the best intentions of U.S. policymakers. It is also an illustration of just how difficult it will be for George W. Bush to realize his hopes for a “West Bank First” strategy that aims to turn Gazan public opinion against the Islamists–much less his goal of a comprehensive peace agreement.
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Israeli town in trauma from Palestinian rockets
(Reuters) SDEROT, Israel – They may be reading the paper, shopping for groceries, putting the kids to bed. But when the siren sounds, the residents of this southern Israeli town drop everything and run for cover. They have 15 seconds to reach one of the bomb shelters that dot Sderot, which lies just 1.5 km (1 mile) from the Gaza Strip and faces an almost daily barrage of Palestinian rockets. No one knows where the rockets will land.
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Dutch FM says Israel unfairly singled out for criticism by UN
(Haaretz) Visiting Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen told Haaretz Monday that the singling out of Israel for criticism in international forums was unfair. “It is not acceptable to focus on Israel time after time, while other countries like Sudan do not receive any reference whatsoever at the United Nations Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly in New York,” Verhagen said in an interview.
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Agreement on Proposal for New Iran Sanctions
(NY Times) The foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council agreed Tuesday to a new set of sanctions against Iran to present to the Council as a draft resolution, but they did not announce details of the sanctions, which are intended to induce Tehran to give up its nuclear program.
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Iran Nuclear: Any new sanctions will be ‘minimal’, says French minister
(AKI) As world powers gather in Berlin to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme, France’s foreign minister Bernard Kouchner told Adnkronos International (AKI) that any new sanctions would be “minimal”.
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Russia: No ‘Harsh’ Sanctions on Iran
(Associated Press) Russia said Wednesday a draft U.N. resolution on Iran’s nuclear program does not call for any harsh sanctions, and the Iranian president said new measures would not deter the country’s pursuit of nuclear technology. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the draft encourages countries to be vigilant in their dealings with Iran to prevent the illegal transfer of nuclear material, but “does not foresee any harsh sanctions.”
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Radical Left, Iran’s Last Legal Dissidents, Until Now
(NY Times) In early December, a surprising scene unfolded at Tehran University: 500 Marxist students held aloft portraits of Che Guevara to protest President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies. Political protest has been harshly suppressed under the current Iranian government, especially dissent linked to the West. But the radical left, despite its antireligious and antigovernment message, has been permitted relative freedom. This may be, analysts say, because, like the government, it rejects the liberal reform movement and attacks the West.
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Iran Leader Under Fire for Gas Shortages
(Associated Press) Iran’s supreme leader Monday reversed a decision by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and ordered him to implement a law supplying natural gas to remote villages amid rising dissatisfaction with the president’s performance. The move by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a major rebuke to the hardline president, whose popularity has plummeted amid rising food prices and deaths due to gas cuts during a particularly harsh winter.
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NORTH AMERCA
Jewish group welcomes Obama’s statement condemning Farrakhan
(Israel News) The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has welcomed Barack Obama’s statement strongly condemning the anti-Semitism of Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam group. The US Senator and Democratic presidential candidate’s statement came in response to reports that his minister, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., leader of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, had honored Farrakhan as one who “truly epitomized greatness.”
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Canada says will not attend UN racism conference
(Ynet) Canada will not take part in a major United Nations conference on racism next year because the event is likely to descend into “regrettable anti-Semitism”, a top official said on Wednesday. Officials said they believed Canada was the first nation to announce it will not attend the conference in Durban, South Africa. The so-called Durban II conference ‘”has gone completely off the rails’” and Canada wants no part of it, said Jason Kenney, Canada’s secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity.
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EUROPE
British NGO: UK taxes fund PA hate education
(Jerusalem Post) British taxpayers are funding hate education and violence in the Middle East, according to a new report published by a British NGO over the weekend. In the first of a series of papers analyzing the effectiveness of Britain’s overseas aid, the Tax Payers Alliance (TPA), which lobbies for lower taxes and better government, has published a report looking at the effects of British aid spending in the Palestinian territories.
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Confronting Poland’s Anti-Semitic Demons
(Time) Jan Tomasz Gross, a U.S. historian born and educated in Poland became internationally famous for his 2001 book Neighbors, chronicling the massacre of Jews in the village of Jedwabne during the Nazi occupation. That book stoked controversy in Poland because it demonstrated that the Jews of Jedwabne had been brutally murdered not by the Germans, but by local Poles. Fear, published in English in 2006 but first released in Polish just two weeks ago, takes a wider look at post-war anti-Semitism in Poland, investigating why Jews returning to their homes having survived Nazi atrocities were terrorized and sometimes murdered by Poles.
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Professor may face charges in Poland
(Daily Princetonian) History professor Jan Gross is under investigation in his native Poland for slandering the Polish government — a crime punishable with a prison sentence of up to three years — after claiming in a new book that anti-Semitism was prevalent in the country after World War II.
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Racist incidents reach record high
(Swiss Info) In a report the Federal Commission against Racism said there had been 355 reported cases of racism since 1995, when legislation came into force requiring the government to keep track of attacks. In all, half have been prosecuted. Jews were the most disproportionately targeted ethnic group, and the subject of roughly one quarter of all incidents during the period 1995-2006.
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US Weapons Trove Bulgarian Denies Anti-Semitic Allegations
(Novinite) The Bulgarian national, who was arrested by the New York police after an arsenal of pipe bombs and weapons was discovered in his apartment, has vigorously denied allegations of anti-Semitism. “I have never painted swastikas and I have never distributed anti-Jewish leaflets,” Ivaylo Ivanov, 31, said during his meeting with Bulgaria’s consul to New York at the prison.
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QUOTES
(Source: Canadian Institute for Jewish Research)
“Israel does not need to apologize for its existence, or apologize for protecting its citizens. It will protect its citizens even at the price of condemnation from the world…. We left Gaza. Israel can no longer remain the pretext for terror organisation attacks against Israel.” -Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, speaking Tuesday night at the Herzliya Conference on Israel’s national security, referring to the Jewish state’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. Yesterday, as Defense Minister Barak authorized a “one-off shipment” of supplies into the Gaza Strip including cooking gas, 500,000 litres of diesel fuel for generators, primarily for hospitals, 2.2 million litres of industrial fuel for power plants, and 50 trucks of humanitarian aid, Palestinian terrorists launched 17 rockets at Israel and snipers fired shots at Israelis on bordering Kibbutzes. (National Post, Jan. 23)
“We are the only state where the consumer aims its missiles every morning towards the country that provides most of its energy.” -Minister of National Infrastructures Binyamin Ben Eliezer, speaking at the January 21 annual Herzliya Conference on the continuing rocket attacks from Gaza terrorists. In response to media inquiries regarding the closing of the Israel-Gaza border and resulting power outages in Gaza, the Israeli Foreign Ministry stated on Jan. 20 that the supply of electricity to Gaza from the Israeli and Egyptian power grids (124 Megawatts and 17 Megawatts respectively) had continued uninterrupted. The 141 Megawatts of power represent about three quarters of Gaza’s electricity needs. While the fuel supply from Israel into Gaza has indeed been reduced, the diversion of this fuel from domestic power generators to other uses is a Hamas decision. Noteworthy, said the Ministry, is the fact that while the Gaza population remains in the dark, the fuel to Hamas’ rocket-manufacturing generators continues to flow unabated. (Consulate General of Israel for Quebec and the Maritimes Newsletter, Jan. 22; National Post, Jan. 23)
“Ultimately, Hamas is to blame for this circumstance because if they were more responsible toward the international community, then Gaza would be connected to the outside world rather than cut off.” -U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the situation in Iranian- and Syrian-funded Hamas-controlled Gaza. In New York, the Security Council met in emergency session to consider the matter, after Libya, the council chair this month, submitted a draft statement that would call on Israel to end its blockade of Gaza and urge Israel “to abide by its obligation under international law, including humanitarian and human rights law, and immediately to cease all its illegal measures and practices against the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip.” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad, supported by French diplomats, told reporters the current draft was unacceptable because “it does not talk about the rocket attacks on innocent Israelis.” (Agence France-Presse, Jan. 22)
“The Bush Doctrine, born on Sept. 20, 2001, when President Bush bluntly warned the sponsors of violent jihad — ‘You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists’ — is dead. Its demise was announced by Condoleezza Rice last Friday. The secretary of state was speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route with the president to Kuwait from Israel. She was explaining why the administration had abandoned the most fundamental condition of its support for Palestinian statehood — an end to Palestinian terror. Rice’s explanation, recounted here by The Washington Times, was as striking for its candor as for its moral blindness: ‘The ‘road map’ for peace, conceived in 2002 by Mr. Bush, had become a hindrance to the peace process, because the first requirement was that the Palestinians stop terrorist attacks. As a result, every time there was a terrorist bombing, the peace process fell apart and went back to square one…. The reason that we haven’t really been able to move forward on the peace process for a number of years is that we were stuck in the sequentiality of the road map. So you had to do the first phase of the road map before you moved on to the third phase of the road map, which was the actual negotiations of final status,’ Rice said… What the US-hosted November peace summit in Annapolis did was ‘break that tight sequentiality…You don’t want people to get hung up on settlement activity or the fact that the Palestinians haven’t fully been able to deal with the terrorist infrastructure….’”
“Thus the president who once insisted that a ‘Palestinian state will never be created by terror’ now insists that a Palestinian state be created regardless of terror. Once the Bush administration championed a ‘road map’ whose first and foremost requirement was that the Palestinians ‘declare an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism’ and shut down ‘all official…incitement against Israel.’ Now the administration says that Palestinian terrorism and incitement are nothing ‘to get hung up on.’” -Columnist Jeff Jacoby. (Boston Globe, Jan. 16)
“Islamic extremists have no real grievance against the West, former British prime minister Tony Blair says, and Western democracies should stand up and say so. Mr. Blair said that, faced with terrorism and extremist rage, liberal-minded Westerners sometimes assume that ‘there’s something that we should be doing, or have done, that is causing this.’ In fact, he told a lunchtime audience in Toronto yesterday, extremism is the result of an internal fight over the future of Islam, not any crime or injustice perpetrated by the West against Muslims. ‘The truth is that they have no sense of grievance against us,’ he said. ‘Truthfully, a Muslim in my country today has more freedom than they do in many Muslim countries.’ If democratic countries want to defeat extremism, he said, they have to be ready to say that it is more than the extremists’ methods they abhor. ‘It is the presumed sense of grievance. It is the idea that we are the cause of an injustice.’ Instead of blaming themselves, he said, the democracies have to be proud of their values and confident that those values are right, not just for the West, but for people in Islamic countries that suffer under dictatorship or religious extremism. ‘We’re not going to win this battle by half-apologizing for our own existence,’ he said.” -Globe and Mail columnist Marcus Gee, summing up Tony Blair’s afternoon talk in Toronto last Thursday. (Globe and Mail, Jan. 18)
“We are awaiting a strike against American soil. Why has that not been done? Why are the Jews in the world not struck?” -Unknown author with username Knight of Islam, on a website posting promoted by al Sahab, al Qaeda’s media arm, which promised an online interview with Bin Laden’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Last month al Sahab collected over 900 questions, but so far there has been no response from Zawahiri. (New York Post, Jan. 22)
“Make no mistake, Durban II is on track to be even worse than Durban I…. [I]f [Canada] drops out, [it] would be exhibiting moral clarity and courage after making the mistake at Durban I of staying despite serious reservations.” -Anne Bayefsky, editor of the UN watchdog website EyeOnTheUN.org and a Fellow of CIJR, warning that the follow up to the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban could potentially repeat its antisemitic slander. Canada’s Foreign Minister, Maxime Bernier, is expected to announce today that Canada will be the first nation to withdraw. An insider familiar with the Conservative government’s policy said, “At the moment, much of the planning for the conference suggests it will focus little on denouncing racism wherever it occurs, and a lot on advancing some countries’ agendas against Israel and the West. The government feels that taking a stand against the gathering will do more in the long run for combatting racism than joining in.” (National Post, Jan. 23)
SHORT TAKES
POLAND, REWRITING HISTORY (Krakow) Polish-born Princeton University Professor Jan T. Gross may be charged with “slandering the Polish nation” with the release of the Polish translation of his book Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz. This is due to a controversial law passed two years ago forbidding the accusation that Poland participated in Nazi or Communist war crimes. The Polish Prosecutor’s Office in Krakow is currently reading the book and is expected to announce a decision this week that could land Gross in prison for up to three years. The book recounts the July 4, 1946 Kielce pogrom, in which 40 Jewish Holocaust survivors who had returned to their hometown were massacred after the spread of a false rumour about Jews killing a Polish boy. As many as 3,000 other Polish Jewish survivors were elsewhere similarly murdered. (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 21)
MISSILE TEST LAUNCHED IN ISRAEL (Jerusalem) A successful test of a new dual-stage missile was carried out at the Palmachim air base last Thursday morning. Israel Radio said the missile was capable of carrying an “unconventional payload” — an apparent reference to nuclear warheads. Israel never intended to publicize Thursday’s nuclear test; it did so only under heavy pressure from the media, and even then only because the evidence was obvious to anyone who happened to be watching the sky over central Israel. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Al-Jazeera TV that this latest development doesn’t worry him, saying that any Israeli attack on Iranian territories would prompt a fierce response. (Ha’aretz, NYT, Jan. 18)
ISLAMIC CHARITY LOBBYIST INDICTED (Washington) A lobbyist who aided an Islamic charity accused of helping terrorists try to remove themselves from government scrutiny has been indicted for participating in a series of financial maneuvers designed to obscure the origin of his consulting fees. Ex-congressman Mark Siljander is alleged to have been paid his fees with money stolen by the Islamic charity from a project for the U.S. agency for International Development. Under Federal law it is illegal for an American to accept fees from any organization that the Treasury Department has designated a terrorism supporter. More than 475 entities and people have had their assets frozen after being named Specially Designated Global Terrorists under an executive order signed by President Bush. (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 18)
14 ARRESTED ON SUSPICION OF PLOTTING ATTACK (Madrid) Spain was on high alert for terrorist attacks on Saturday after police arrested 14 suspects of Pakistani and Indian origin who authorities contend were plotting an attack on Barcelona. Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, Spain’s interior minister, told reporters that police acted with the help of information from foreign intelligence agencies. (NYT, Jan. 20)
CANADIAN GETS LIFE IN QAEDA BOMB PLOT (New York) A Canadian man who plotted with top leaders of al Qaeda in devising to blow up the United States embassies in Singapore and the Philippines was sentenced to life in prison at a court hearing in Manhattan. The son of a Kuwaiti stockbroker who grew up near Toronto, Mohammed Mansur Jabarah, 25, has been in American custody since 2001 and initially co-operated with the government giving it critical information about al Qaeda. Relations soured when Jabarah was accused of plotting to kill his government minders. (NYT, Jan. 19)
SUSPECT TALKED OF HIJACKING (Montreal) Secret files made public by the Federal Court this week seem to back up a controversial Montreal French newspaper report about alleged terrorist Adil Charkaoui. La Presse, citing unnamed sources, reportedlast June that Charkaoui, a Montreal resident,discussed in 2000 the hijacking of a commercial jetliner in a plot that foreshadowed the 9/11 attacks. Judge Simon Noel, who is ruling on a security certificate that would remove Charkaoui from Canada as a threat to national security, has said that although the recently unclassified documents back up the La Presse report, they nevertheless fail to provide concrete evidence that Charkaoui travelled to Afghanistan in 1998 to follow military and religious training at Osama bin Laden’s camp. (National Post, Jan. 19)
PRAYER ON JEWS MAY CHANGE (Jerusalem) Pope Benedict XVI has reportedly decided to modify a controversial prayer for the conversion of Jews, which asks God to deliver the “veil” from Jewish hearts and makes reference to their “blindness”. A Vatican source said he expected changes to be announced before Good Friday on March 21 this year. Controversy arose last year when the Pope issued a decree allowing a wider use of the old-style Latin Mass and a missal (prayer book) that was phased out after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which met from 1963-1965. (Ha’aretz, NYT, Jan. 18, 19)
VENEZUELA’S JEWS SPEAK OUT (Caracas) Two dozen heavily armed policemen came to search the Hebraica community center in Caracas looking for “subversive material,” including weapons. The Confederation of Israelite Associations of Venezuela publicly denounced the raid as an “unjustifiable act” aimed at sowing tensions between the community and the government of Socialist President Hugo Chavez. (Forward, Jan. 16)
THAI COMPANY PULLS PLUG ON HEZBOLLAH TV (Jerusalem) A Thai satellite company said Wednesday it stopped airing broadcasts of the Al-Manar television channel after learning from foreign media it was tied to Hezbollah. “We would like to confirm to you that we do not provide the… Al-Manar TV Channel on any THAICOM satellites at the moment and will not do so in the future,” Piyanuch Sujpluem, a spokesman for Shin Satellite Public Company said. The US government in 2006 declared the station a “terrorist entity.” (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 16)